It's been a couple years in the making, but I think I've finally found my "keeper" e30. Since selling my long-term owned, full-caged e30 track car in 2019 I've been bouncing around the idea of "building" another e30. To be truthful, I've already bought and sold (3) separate e30's in various states of disrepair or "build" with the idea that I could dedicate the time/money/attention to another project e30 like I used to and that's just not the case (for now :)). High pressure job, KIDS, time consuming hobbies, lack of garage, etc etc... Nonetheless, I've still been keeping an eye on marketplace and the classifieds here and about a month ago I saw this necro-bump from wildstoats on a for sale thread that was started in 2017:
Coincidently, the first swap I ever performed on my aforementioned long-term owned 325is was an m30 swap back in 2008-2009 and I had really fond memories of the road manners on that car- I reached out immediately. Brian gave me the run down, super honest assessment and I could tell from the build thread, for sale ad and talking to him that the car was well put together for the price. I'd never been to Pittsburgh before and it was actually on my list of places I wanted to check out so I convinced my girlfriend it was a sound plan, borrowed a super nice Featherlite trailer from my buddy, loaded up the dog and headed north.
When in Pittsburgh- the incline rail first thing in the AM is a must
Met bright and early, agreed to buy and loaded up the car
Rolled back to the hotel and realized that Uber/Lyft was not a great option in Pittsburgh, so I unloaded the car and drove it around town for the rest of the day. Had a pretty awesome time hooning my newly purchased e30 around a new city, and had perfect weather for NO A/C- girlfriend didn't even complain
Long road trip home - Trailer was awesome, GX460 was struggling with the weight + hills. I had to manual shift it to keep it in the powerband and plan ahead for the uphills... Ended up averaging about 9.5mpg on the 7hr drive back to Charlotte.
Once I got the car home, I started sorting through the massive spares package that came with it. First order of business was swapping out the beat up/bent valance for the spare valance, and installing some fog light blanks and ebay iS lip. Big improvement to the overall look.
Next, installed my bike rack and dropped the car off at my preferred exhaust shop locally to re-do the rear section of the exhaust. The car currently has single 2.5" from the downpipe back, with a 2.5" bullet style resonator and Vibrant 1047 rear muffler
Favorite thing so far about the car is the wheels. The e38 style 5 re-drills have never really been on my radar before but the Spinfab re-drill with the modified RS style hex/waffle is such a nice setup.
That really gets us up to current day. I've been daily-ing the car for the last week, giving my W212 E63 a much needed rest. Don't really have any big plans for this car in the short term aside from cleaning up the interior by installing parts that were included, and maybe swapping seats around a bit. Just trying to enjoy day-to-day e30 life once again and see what I feel like doing with this thing. Planning to use this thread to log progress as we go.
Coincidently, the first swap I ever performed on my aforementioned long-term owned 325is was an m30 swap back in 2008-2009 and I had really fond memories of the road manners on that car- I reached out immediately. Brian gave me the run down, super honest assessment and I could tell from the build thread, for sale ad and talking to him that the car was well put together for the price. I'd never been to Pittsburgh before and it was actually on my list of places I wanted to check out so I convinced my girlfriend it was a sound plan, borrowed a super nice Featherlite trailer from my buddy, loaded up the dog and headed north.
When in Pittsburgh- the incline rail first thing in the AM is a must
Met bright and early, agreed to buy and loaded up the car
Rolled back to the hotel and realized that Uber/Lyft was not a great option in Pittsburgh, so I unloaded the car and drove it around town for the rest of the day. Had a pretty awesome time hooning my newly purchased e30 around a new city, and had perfect weather for NO A/C- girlfriend didn't even complain
Long road trip home - Trailer was awesome, GX460 was struggling with the weight + hills. I had to manual shift it to keep it in the powerband and plan ahead for the uphills... Ended up averaging about 9.5mpg on the 7hr drive back to Charlotte.
Once I got the car home, I started sorting through the massive spares package that came with it. First order of business was swapping out the beat up/bent valance for the spare valance, and installing some fog light blanks and ebay iS lip. Big improvement to the overall look.
Next, installed my bike rack and dropped the car off at my preferred exhaust shop locally to re-do the rear section of the exhaust. The car currently has single 2.5" from the downpipe back, with a 2.5" bullet style resonator and Vibrant 1047 rear muffler
Favorite thing so far about the car is the wheels. The e38 style 5 re-drills have never really been on my radar before but the Spinfab re-drill with the modified RS style hex/waffle is such a nice setup.
That really gets us up to current day. I've been daily-ing the car for the last week, giving my W212 E63 a much needed rest. Don't really have any big plans for this car in the short term aside from cleaning up the interior by installing parts that were included, and maybe swapping seats around a bit. Just trying to enjoy day-to-day e30 life once again and see what I feel like doing with this thing. Planning to use this thread to log progress as we go.
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